by L.H. Cosway
Jacob blinked and stepped forward, clearing his throat. “Oh, Damon, if only you could dance as well as you sing.” He turned to the others. “Okay, everybody, from the top.”
And that was all anyone said about it. I still wasn’t quite sure why they’d all been staring like they had.
“Let’s take fifteen,” said Iggy after we practiced the song with the dance routine several times. “Then we’ll do a few more run-throughs before the end of the day.”
I watched Rose return to her coveted corner, sticking her earphones back in and hitting “play” on her iPod as she chugged on some water. I wanted to go over there, talk to her. Already my feet were on the move, and it was completely out of character. I never approached people. They approached me.
Taking a seat beside her, I pulled a bud from her ear and stuck it in mine. A prim voice spoke, and I realised she wasn’t listening to music. She was listening to a book.
“What’s this?” I asked, and she smiled a little sheepishly.
“It’s a novel called Outlander, you know, like the TV show. I’m a bit of an audiobook junkie,” she explained, and there was something about how she said it, with a hint of embarrassment, that I found endearing.
I listened for a minute, unexpectedly falling into the story. Rose poked me in the arm. “You should consider doing one. I’d listen to a story narrated by you any day of the week.”
I stared at her, unsure how to reply to that. After a moment I leaned in, my shoulder brushing hers as I spoke low. “And what book would you have me narrate?”
She paused to consider her answer, tapping her lower lip with her middle finger. “Hmm, if only Elizabeth Gaskell had written North and South from the male point of view. You’d make a fantastic Mr Thornton.”
I affected a brooding frown. “That’s how you see me? All moody and tortured?”
She eyed me, seeming surprised that I knew who Mr Thornton was. “Maybe add ‘shy’ to that list. You’ve barely spoken a word to me all week.”
I rubbed at my jaw and looked across the studio to where Iggy stood with Jacob, both men talking, their eyes on us. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
Seeming to notice my self-consciousness, she nudged me with her elbow. “Did you know you sound like Sean Bean? I could listen to him recite the phone book,” she said on a sigh. Did that mean she could listen to me recite the phone book, too? For a second her blue eyes widened, like she just realised what she’d said. I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, so I changed the subject.
“Do you remember earlier when I was singing my part of the song for the first time?”
Rose nodded and took another gulp of water. My attention wandered to the delicate curve of her throat as she swallowed and then back up to her bright eyes. My brow furrowed. It was becoming disconcerting how closely I watched her sometimes.
“Everybody got weird for a second, just…staring at me. What was that about?”
She turned her body to look me dead in the eye. “You have no idea, have you?
“No idea of what?”
“Of how good you are. When you sing, I swear, even the straight guys in the cast get stiffys.”
I sputtered a laugh, surprised by her unexpected bluntness. “You’re lying.”
“And you’re oblivious, Damon. You’re a fantastic actor and an amazing singer. It’s hard for people not to go all googly-eyed when you perform. I guess that’s why you’re a star.” She shrugged like it was simple.
“I haven’t been a star for a very long time, and even then it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be,” I said. What I really wanted to say was, “Do you get a stiffy when I sing?” Or, uh, the female equivalent.
Do you get wet when I sing, Rose?
The question filled my head with images. In my mind she was spread wide and naked on my bed, begging, pleading…. My gaze wandered from her curious expression to her exposed shoulder. Her oversized T-shirt was hanging off again, revealing a tight tank top beneath. The rise and fall of her breathing led my attention to her tits, which were round and full, but frustratingly hidden beneath the bagginess of the top.
“Hey, guys,” came a sweet voice, and I looked up to see Alicia approaching us. “That was a tough wake-up call, huh? I think I need to start working out more.”
“Oh, stop, you did great,” Rose replied. “You’re a natural dancer.”
“Unlike me,” I added, and Rose elbowed me in the side.
“You’ll be a natural by the time Iggy and I are done with you. Don’t worry.” She smiled, and I almost believed her. Alicia edged closer and lowered her voice. “So, uh, what’s the deal with Bob? Is he, like, some kind of lush or something?”
Rose let out a slow breath. “Poor old Bob. He’s been a regular on the circuit for years, but his wife left him a couple of months ago, and he’s hit the bottle pretty hard.”
“Oh, no, really?” said Alicia with affected concern.
“Yeah, it’s sad. Heartbreak can fuck with the best of us at times,” Rose replied.
I wondered if she was thinking of Blake, how he broke her heart. I wanted to know what had happened between them, and it surprised me. Being around all these people after spending the last eight years of my life in near-solitude was overwhelming. I was eager to know them. Well, maybe not all of them. Maybe just Rose.
What was it about her?
“Right, back to the grindstone, everyone,” Iggy called, clapping his hands to gather everybody’s attention. Alicia gave us each a little finger wave and strode off. I dropped my head forward and rubbed at my temples before glancing up to see Rose giving me a sympathetic look.
“This is torture for you, isn’t it?” she said, blue eyes taking me in.
I nodded. “I’m not sure I’ll ever take to this dancing lark. I’m too big and awkward.”
“Big is good,” she replied, and then paled. A moment of quiet ensued, and it was leaden with tension. I let my eyes drop to the freckle on her jaw as she fumbled for words to continue.
“I mean, for a male dancer, because you have to be able to lift your partner and whatnot. The awkward part we can get around.” She paused and pursed her lips, tilting her head as she considered me. When she spoke again, she leaned close, her voice low. “I can give you lessons, if you like. After hours, that is. Not to brag, but I’m very good at what I do, and you seem more comfortable around me than other people. If we’re alone, you’ll be less self-conscious. You can just relax and let me guide you. What do you think?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I answered, perhaps a little too quickly.
I couldn’t deny that the thought of spending more time with Rose appealed to me. She was right — I was more comfortable around her than others. She was a sea of calm to my troubled thoughts, and I wanted to feel more of that. I wasn’t used to it.
“Hey, you two, chop chop,” Iggy called, shooting us an impatient look.
“I’ll let you know when we can start our lessons,” Rose whispered, and hurried over to her boss’s side.
Five.
*Rose*
Props were so much fun. I sat on a sparkly, diamond-encrusted swing in the theatre as Iggy paced from left to right, his hand on his chin as he pondered me. Okay, so maybe it was more cubic zirconia encrusted than diamond, but you know what I mean.
The swing was for Alicia’s big “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number. Though rehearsals were still ongoing at the dance studio, the set for the show was in the process of being built, and Iggy and I were trying to figure out some logistics for the choreography. I relished the freedom of the empty theatre as I swung back and forth in various seductive poses, pretending to be Satine.
No audience. No fear.
There was one reason why I’d never aspired to dance in front of an audience, and that was a severe case of stage fright. For years Iggy tried to encourage me to fight my phobia, but in the end he accepted I was a lost cause, destined to forever linger behind the curtains.
I didn’t min
d. I liked my job. It was comfortable and safe. And though I sometimes mourned for what might’ve been, I knew I could live with it. After all, not performing on stage was hardly the end of the world. I still got to do the thing I loved. I still got to dance.
My friend Farrah happened by and shot me a grin. I’d worked with her on my last production and was delighted to discover she’d been hired to do wardrobe for Moulin Rouge.
“You should get a load of the corset I’m designing for this scene,” she called over. “It’s going to be a fucking masterpiece.”
“How very modest of you to say,” Iggy replied dryly, and she flipped him off before sauntering away. Those two always had a sort of bitchy love/hate friendship. I was sure if Iggy wasn’t gay, the both of them would’ve started having uber-hot hate sex a long time ago. I loved Farrah because she was one of those no-nonsense older women who kicked arse at living life, who you sort of wished you could become one day.
A couple of minutes later, the lead actors arrived for a preliminary stage rehearsal. I locked eyes with Damon, and a tiny shiver of awareness trickled down my spine. He stared up at me, his eyes zeroing in on the curve of my waist before running down the length of my body. I remembered our little conversation from yesterday. I’d embarrassed myself twice, first admitting how I’d love to hear him narrate an audiobook, and then with the whole “big is good” comment. Somebody needed to put a leash on my mouth, seriously.
Alicia approached me. “So, this is the swing, huh? Jacob’s been waxing lyrical to me about it all morning. I have to admit, it’s pretty impressive.”
I nodded, and Iggy came over. “Rose is going to teach you how to use it. We want to make sure there’s no chance of you falling off and breaking your coccyx, or you know, anything else. Sorry, I just like saying the word ‘coccyx.’” He chuckled, and Alicia shot him a weird look. Iggy was the kind of man you either got or you didn’t.
I cleared my throat and nodded up to the rafters, where Paul the props guy was finishing his coffee break. “We’re going to practice with Paul lowering you down. During the performances, your outfit will be harnessed to the swing and then released once you hit the stage. I’ll demonstrate first.”
Sitting back down on the swing, Iggy hooked the harness around my waist, and I gripped a tight hold as I shouted to Paul, “Beam me up, Scotty!”
I just about made out his eye roll. Like Farrah, I already knew Paul from previous shows. We’d practiced the lowering of the swing a few times earlier in the morning, so I was an old pro at it now as everybody watched me rise up to the ceiling. A small jolt of stage fright hit me, but I rejected it just as quickly. There were ten people here, tops. Nothing, really. It was Damon’s attention that I felt the most, and I was beginning to realise that he watched me more closely than the others.
As I was lowered back down, my eyes found his once more, but I couldn’t decipher his expression. His gaze was so…consuming. I used the ropes as reins and swung in a circle, kicking my legs out and raising an elegant hand in the air to show Alicia how we wanted her to do it. Damon’s attention never left me all the while.
Once I was back on the stage, I got off and began instructing Alicia further. She perched herself on the diamond-esque swing, arching her spine in a delicately seductive pose. It didn’t take long for her to seriously impress me. She’d trained as a dancer in her teens, so she picked everything up fairly quickly, even joking to me at one point, “Forget about diamonds — a Visa Infinite card is a girl’s best friend.”
I grinned in return, probably because it reminded me of something Julian would say. Iggy busied himself with showing the lead actors their positions, while Jacob described what he wanted from them for the scene.
It was about twenty minutes later that Bob finally showed his face, looking dishevelled and hungover. Oh, Bob. I wished I was on friendlier terms with him so maybe I could offer some help, but I only really knew him in passing.
Jacob looked like he wanted to drown a bag of kittens when he clapped eyes on the man. He left the others and quickly pulled Bob backstage, I presumed to exchange a few harsh words. I shot Iggy a concerned expression, which he returned, and then tried to get on with showing Alicia her final moves.
Jacob and Bob returned a few minutes later, with Bob looking suitably shamefaced. It was as we were running through the last of the choreography for the scene that I noticed Bob get up from his seat.
His grey complexion concerned me, so I left Alicia and went to see if he was all right. Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished, and when I reached him, he pushed me violently out of the way, mumbling that he was going to be sick. I slipped and would’ve fallen if it weren’t for Damon.
He moved fast, catching me in his arms before I hit the floor. I sucked in a breath, my chest heaving as I stared up at him.
“Close call,” he said, frowning as he stared down at me. I nodded, unable to find my voice for a second. His quick reflexes were impressive.
“You okay, Rose?” he asked, his mouth caressing my name. I swallowed and tried to ignore how nice his arms felt around me, how good he smelled this close.
“I’m fine. Thank you. I might’ve been out of action if you hadn’t been so quick on the mark.”
His lips firmed, and a moment passed between us before he pulled me upright. My chest brushed against his forearm, and I shivered at the contact before stepping away from him.
“Did I just see what I think I did?” came Jacob’s shrill voice. Both Damon and I turned to look at the director, his expression furious. He didn’t wait for us to confirm that Bob had pushed me, but simply straightened his spine and strode after him.
“Shit,” I whispered, biting my lip in worry as I watched him go. “I hope Bob doesn’t get fired over this.”
Damon’s firm hand gripped my shoulder, and he stared down at me, his eyes sincere. “He’s out of sorts and probably will be for a long time. Maybe it’s for the best.”
I glanced away, my gut churning, because I knew what it was like to be Bob, too heart-broken to care about life’s priorities anymore. Sure, what had happened with Blake was nothing like having your wife of twenty years leave you for another man, but I dunno, I still felt a kinship towards him. All my life I’d been so eager to love, which seemed to attract the wrong sort of attention and inevitably left me lovesick and alone. Perhaps it was because I knew how it felt that allowed me to empathise with Bob.
Maybe Damon had never had his heart broken. Maybe that was why he didn’t understand Bob like I did.
“We’d better get back to work,” I said curtly before returning to Alicia. I didn’t look at him directly, but I felt him watching me leave.
***
Later that day I felt bad about being so short with Damon. After being told by an assistant that he’d gone inside his dressing room a little while ago, I decided to seek him out. I’d ask if he’d like to begin our private dance lessons tomorrow evening. See if he was up for it.
When I reached his dressing room, I found the door slightly ajar, and before entering I could hear voices coming from within. Recognising one of them as Alicia’s, I peeked through the crack in the door and saw her perched in the seat by Damon’s dressing table while he stood off to one side.
“I’ve always wanted to visit Scotland, you know,” she said in the sweet, flirtatious voice she always seemed to use with men. “That’s where you’ve been living all this time, right?”
“Not on the mainland. My home is on the Isle of Skye, where my grandmother was born.”
“Oh, is that where you grew up, too?”
I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t she tell the difference between a Scottish and a Yorkshire accent? As soon as the question entered my head, I realised I was being jealous and possessive of Damon’s friendship. It became clear that I quite liked being the only person he made an effort to talk to, and I didn’t enjoy the idea of being usurped by Alicia.
“No, my mam was Scottish, but she left when she was a teen. A lot of yo
ung people leave, wanting something more than the simple island life. She met my dad and settled down close to Sheffield. That’s where I spent my early childhood.”
“And did you miss acting? Is that why you decided to do this show?”
“Yes and no. If acting could be just acting, then I never would’ve quit.”
A quiet elapsed, and I guessed Alicia didn’t know how to respond to what Damon had said. I heard a soft feminine sigh.
“I understand. Your life is no longer your own. Sometimes I think about how everything was before I got famous, and I feel sort of envious of that girl. There was so much she was better off not knowing.”
If Alicia was putting this on, then she really was a good actress. And that was the thing — she was so good at what she did that I couldn’t tell if she was being real or not. I heard a floorboard creak, like Damon had taken a step closer to her.
“Did you want to be famous back then?” he asked.
“More than anything else in the world.”
“Why?” He sounded genuinely perplexed, which made me wonder why he got into acting if he never wanted the fame. I hated that he sounded fascinated by Alicia’s reply, like he was getting to see a side of her no one else did.
“Because I wanted everyone to love me,” she answered, and then let out a sad laugh. “The thing I didn’t know was that if ten thousand people love you, there are always going to be a thousand who hate you, and even though the love far outweighs the hate, you’ll feel it so intensely that the love might as well not exist at all.”
Oh, wow. I didn’t expect this. She was being real, and I couldn’t compete with it, not in a million years.
“We all fixate on criticism,” said Damon. “And those that say they don’t are fucking liars.”
Alicia let out a surprised laugh and I turned away from the door, deciding to leave them both to it. They were costars, and it sounded like they were bonding. Far be it from me to interrupt. And yes, okay, I was jealous. It was ridiculous, but I couldn’t seem to help it.
As I walked down the pale magnolia corridor, I remembered Damon smiling at me in my flat, and a sharpness struck my chest. It was the only smile he’d given me, and I held it close, like a gift. The fact of the matter was, I didn’t want Alicia stealing smiles that were meant for me. They were so rare, so fleeting, that it almost felt like a challenge to get another one. He was so closed off, never showing much, but still just enough to leave you dying for another glimpse.